You Won’t Believe What Escape Room Staff Have Seen People Do—Prepare to Be Shocked and Amused!
Ever wondered what happens when the thrill of an escape room meets the… less-than-thrilling decisions of some participants? We all crave a bit of adventure—those heart-pounding quests and mind-bending puzzles that let us feel like heroes for an hour or so. But let’s face it, sometimes escaping a room turns into an escapade of a whole different kind, especially when people’s antics leave the staff shaking their heads in disbelief. From trying to breathe life into doorknobs with the “power of friendship” to mistaking electrical outlets for secret treasure spots, escape room employees have seen it all—and then some. Curious to dive into the wacky, wildly funny moments that make escape rooms unforgettable (for all the wrong reasons)? Buckle up, this is a ride through some of the most bizarre and hilarious escapades inside those puzzling walls.
Everyone likes going on adventures because they’re so fun and challenging. In our regular day-to-day lives, it’s not really possible to just go out on a quest at a whim, which is why we have to make it happen.
Escape rooms have solved that problem and made it possible for people to participate in mysteries, work through tough puzzles, and go on cool escapades while still being in a safe place. People try different strategies to get out, and some of their techniques have made an impression on employees. Here are their stories.
More info: Reddit
This was our group, we were having trouble with the last puzzle to get out which in involved pressing multiple buttons, we couldn’t figure out the sequences and finally asked for a hint. The employee just said “all together” so now instead of pushing all the buttons at the same time we all put our hands on the doorknob assuming the power of friendship was what was needed to get out. The employee just went “no the buttons” cue helpless embarrassed laughter for the next half hour.
Something my group did. The scenario of the room was we were captured and they had us all handcuffed to a cot in the room. We could move around a little bit with the chain attached to the cuffs and since it was a small room with a light on the desk we could grab most of the puzzles and bring it to the cot. We solved a lot of the puzzles still not finding the key to the cuffs to get free. With only a small desk lamp for light it was hard to see most of the writing but we made do and continued to solve things. About 20 minutes of solving things still cuffed to the cot the GM sends us a message saying “You know you can turn on the lights” next to the door was a light switch and after turning on the room lights on the black wall right next to us was a black key hanging on a nail…the key to the cuffs. We escaped the room shortly after that.
Some dude tried to jam a small iron bar into an electrical socket.
Not sure if he was trying to escape the room, or life in general.
My collegue managed to get to the main electrical switch before the idiot could elektrocute himself.
Someone else posted this story where at some point you find a screwdriver, the point was to unscrew a clock you found previously to get a key, instead one guy started taking apart all the furniture, started unscrewing fixtures off the wall, he was a little bit over zealous.
Not an employee but a participant
My group went to a pirate ship themed escape room. One of the puzzles involved pressing lit up labeled buttons on a wall in a particular sequence to unlock a door. A common theme (to me) in this room was water. There were exposed water pipes that had cartoonish signs on them reading “do not touch”, and one of the lights on the wall read “water” and the light behind it was out. I had to have fixated on this for a good 30 minutes; I tried unscrewing parts of the water pipes, pressing the water button while trying to open parts of the pipe, everything. After we finally moved on and finished the GM told us that the room had nothing to do with water, I was actually just messing with their water system.
One of the benefits of going to new escape rooms is listening to the opening spiel about what you can’t do in the room. I think my first ever escape room, the the operator specifically told us we couldn’t pull off the electrical outlet covers. I figured someone had been watching too much Breaking Bad.
I did the stupidest thing I’ve heard of. There was a row of chairs, just regular chairs you might see at a conference. I noticed that only one of them had the label with a barcode and serial number stuck to the bottom so I assumed it was intentional and started trying to apply the 10+ digit serial number to everything in the room. The game master told me I wasn’t the first one. Makes me wonder why they didn’t just remove the label like they did on the other chairs..
On the flip side, this reminded me of the stupidest puzzle I ever did. The theme of the room was to make as much money as possible by “stealing” fake cash, gold, sports memorabilia, etc. before you escaped the room. At one point there was a huge fake diamond raised on a stand in a clear plastic box with small holes in the side, and a larger hole at the top. Earlier in the puzzle there was a box we unlocked that contained sticks, the idea was to put the sticks through the small holes and use them to carefully lift the diamond out of the box through the hole at the top. If you dropped it, you wouldn’t be able to pick it up again. I just reached through the hole in the top and grabbed the diamond by hand. The hole was way too big and the box way too short. One of my buddies got mad saying I was cheating, I defaulted back to my 6th grade math teacher’s motto: “work smarter, not harder.”.
My big brother works at an escape room
the room the people were in was quite large and full of stuff but only few hints to get through
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